Murdoch’s Media Empire

With people dying in the sea at the edge of fortress Europe, and the rising drumbeat of far-right parties, New Internationalist magazine recently argued that “It has never been so urgent to challenge alarmist illiberal voices.” [1]

Here Ethical Consumer argue key to these problems are ‘news’ groups for whom this illiberalism is not incidental but actually part of their mission. And at the top of the pile of such groups lie the business interests of Rupert Murdoch.

It is, of course, not news that he favours right-wing positions, but it is easy to misunderstand his empire as simply a cynical profit-making machine, much like other global corporations. Of course, the extreme tax avoidance and excessive directors’ pay certainly fit this model. But this doesn’t really explain the crusading zeal with which his media pursue his political interests. 

To understand Rupert Murdoch, you need to realise that he believes that there is a general bias across media and journalism in favour of liberal and left ideas.[2] Although this may seem absurd to Ethical Consumer readers, it fuels and justifies his mission to provide an avowedly biased ‘counterweight’. 

In this way we can view his high-risk takeovers and huge investments not simply as business decisions but also as political manoeuvres to grab ‘land’ for the political right. We can also, therefore, understand, for example, his persistent lobbying in the UK against the BBC (see box below)  not as a business crying foul but as a political campaigner seeking to crush a liberal organisation.

This aspect of his political strategy is most transparent in the case of the US TV Channel Fox News. Much analysed by political commentators and comedians alike, its deliberate foundation as a right-wing news channel in 1996 to counterbalance perceived prevailing liberalism is a matter of public record.[3]

There is a need for those of us who oppose his political position to take particular care, right now, not to inadvertently fund his mission by buying into his many brands.

USA Today puts the Murdoch family Trust's holdings at 49 major media companies. Here we list just a few. In 2012, Rupert Murdoch split his holdings into two groups:

Warming the planet

Rupert Murdoch’s views on climate change have also been well documented. In a 2014 interview he told Sky News Australia:

“We should approach climate change with great scepticism. Climate change has been going on as long as the planet [has been] here, there will always be a little bit of it.” 

Two key academic studies have found clear evidence of bias in this media empire against the scientific consensus on climate change.

A 2014 study by Rutgers University in the US found that Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal was “less likely than the other newspapers to discuss the threats or impacts of climate change and more likely to frame climate action as ineffective or even harmful.” The authors of the study concluded that, given the Journal’s conservative readership, the negative nature of its climate reporting “could exacerbate ideological polarization on climate change.”

In addition, the authors said that “The Journal was far less likely than the other newspapers to mention at least one impact of climate change on the environment, public health, national security, or the economy.” The Journal only mentioned climate change impacts in 21.6 percent of its climate stories, far less frequently than The New York Times (40.3 percent), The Washington Post (48.8 percent) and USA Today (58.2 percent).

The authors concluded that:

“The Wall Street Journal, to the extent that its reporting is affected by its conservative editorial stance, departs not just from the other three papers’ coverage, but from the generally accepted scientific consensus on climate change.”

An earlier study, carried out by the University of New South Wales in Australia from 1997 to 2007, showed similar results. Here researchers found that newspapers and television stations owned by News Corporation largely denied the science of climate change and dismissed those who were concerned about it.

The study noted that while:

“The intensity of commentary and editorials about climate change varied between media outlets owned by News Corporation in the USA, Britain and Australia, its corporate view framed the issue as one of political correctness rather than science. Scientific knowledge was portrayed as an orthodoxy and its own stance, and that of climate sceptics as one of ‘courageous dissent’”.[4]

This is perhaps why the Murdoch family’s $725 million purchase of National Geographic last year caused so much consternation among its readers and the wider public. Not only did it take the title from the not-for-profit sector but it is likely to affect the company’s editorial integrity.

Warmongering

Although this article focuses most attention on Murdoch media’s bias regarding climate change there have been a large number of studies looking at other issues such as its support for wars in the middle east. 

The US writer Anthony R. DiMaggio looked in 2008 at how Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News became a leading force, though not the only one, in promoting war in Iraq and using the language of a ‘war on terror.’[5] His analysis would apply equally well to its position on the current war in Syria.

Another US study in the same year found “an extraordinary unity across his media empire on the need for war in Iraq”.[8] And in the UK, the group Spinwatch have described how the “Implacable support of the Murdoch press for the Iraq War was a key factor for Tony Blair.”

A difficult but necessary boycott

Boycotting cultural products is much more difficult that changing brands of toothpaste or washing powder; it can be an emotional wrench. But of all the dangerous company groups around the world that we come across at Ethical Consumer, the Murdoch empire has to be one of the most alarming. 

One of the saddest things is that much of the cultural content bought up and fenced off by the Murdoch empire is not concerned with his political strategy and is great content for conservatives and liberals alike. These include football matches between teams that families have supported for generations, and cricket tours around the world that used to be the common property of all of us and broadcast by the BBC. He also owns TV programmes like the Simpsons, films like Avatar and books like Collins Guides and Naomi Klein’s book No Logo...to name but a few. Boycotting cultural goods is not easy.

But the late, great British playwright Dennis Potter perhaps gives us a pointer to how best to deal with Murdoch. He named the pancreatic cancer that ended his life ‘Rupert’ after Rupert Murdoch.

As with all cancers, the sooner you can cut them out, the better your chance of survival.